


Divers

by sorrymom



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, japanese folklore au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23723617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorrymom/pseuds/sorrymom
Summary: There are two worlds and tonight Momo is in this one.
Relationships: Hirai Momo/Minatozaki Sana, minor Park Jihyo/Myoui Mina
Comments: 9
Kudos: 126





	Divers

**Author's Note:**

> hey, there are some discussions of terminal illness in here of a third, not-twice character. just wanted to give a heads up!

There are two worlds and tonight Momo is in this one:

Thin grass is brittle with frost. Cattle are laid out in a crescent on the hill. Their breath rises from their bodies like flames. Light pollution from a distant city rises over the hills like a weaker, second moon. 

Momo crouches beside one of the bulls, a hand laid on the matted black fur over his ribs. It’s funny to think of everything that’s inside him; the chuck and shank and slivered oasis of tenderloin. 

Momo is not a butcher. 

She touches her cracked canine tooth with the tip of her tongue. 

Like any kindly parasite, she waits until the bull is ripe. Its lips tremble, its eyelashes flicker. Momo cups the heavy head, bringing it to rest in her lap, and then the sleep-slack jaw opens. 

Sometimes cattle dream about bolt-guns and dragons. Sometimes they dream about their best friend’s chest rising and falling. 

Tonight, when the dream swims from its throat into Momo’s open palm the dream is minnows. 

Momo swallows them whole and for a second she knows the cow, every inch of its mind; what it’s afraid of, what it’s sorry for, all laid out simply in another field where fish grow like rye. 

“Thank you for the meal,” she whispers to the sleeping bull. 

When she leaves him, Momo cuts her palm on the barbed wire fence. 

She bleeds and it’s something dark for the stars to shine on.

* * * * *

There are two worlds and tonight Momo is in this one:

A train car rattles on rain-slick rails, sun halved and then quartered on the horizon of knuckled mountains. It’s fast enough that the bloody maples blur wildfires against the window before dusk can snuff them out. 

There are two other passengers in the cabin. One is a tourist sleeping a few rows back, brochures spilled out from the unzipped backpack beside him. He snores softly, cheek tucked against a neck pillow.

The other is a girl about the same age Momo is pretending to be. Her headphones are in, a finger twisting aimlessly around the white cord. 

But it’s still a risk, Momo thinks, glancing at the tourist. He’s easy. He’s a heavy fruit on a thin branch. Hunger twists its lightning knife in her chest. 

She peeks between the seats, angling until she can see the girl’s face. Her eyes are closed, lips miming lyrics. There’s a single, soot-black tear track down her cheek. 

Momo glances back at the tourist. He’d be so easy. She bites the side of her tongue, recentering the pain. 

If the girl falls asleep, if she can be patient, that’s double the— 

Her lips still. 

Momo tenses. It’s times like these that she feels like a hunter, a jaguar waiting for a doe to fumble. 

The girl’s lips are a slack line. 

Finally. 

Momo smiles. 

Two dreams for the price of one rickety little train car. 

She flexes her fingers and tongues her teeth and— 

The girl is staring back, smiling, bright and knowing. She leans forward like a mirror. 

“Is this one of those things where I caught you staring,” the girl murmurs conspiratorially, “or is it one of those things where just coincidentally our eyes fell to each other, and I shouldn’t say anything about it?” 

Her breath smells like strawberry amoxicillin. 

“Um,” Momo says. 

“Would you like a clementine?” 

Momo glances at the tourist. His sensible tennis shoes twitch frantically. Maybe a nightmare. 

But then there’s a clementine and the girl’s expectant pat on the seat beside her. She peels the fruit in a clean spiral, then breaks it apart into carpels. 

“You looked hungry,” she says. “I’m Sana. I’m Sana who looked at you for a split second and thought ‘oh, she’s hungry.’” 

Momo chews slowly. She tucks a fist where Sana can’t see and forces herself to swallow. 

“A good way to remember people’s names is to associate them with something.” 

“Mine is easy,” Momo says. “It’s Momo. Like the—”

“Momo who doesn’t like fruit. I saw that face you made. You could have said you didn’t want it.” 

The tourist shifts in his seat, head lolling back toward the window. 

“Or maybe you just wanted to sit next to me.” Sana pops another slice into her mouth. 

“I was checking if you were asleep,” Momo says. It’s just a little bit of truth. Sana won’t be able to do anything with it. 

Sana chews quickly. “I can’t on trains. Or cars or buses or planes. Isn’t that sad?”

“Yeah,” Momo says, because it really, really is. It’s been a week since the cattle, since she managed to scrape together a meal, and all it takes is a stray insomniac to mess everything up. 

“You don’t have to act so morose,” Sana continues. “Look out the window.” 

Momo stares at her, waiting for the laugh to break like a whitecap, but Sana nods seriously. So she looks. 

“That’s the Kano. And if you could see miles and miles further you’d see the waterfall where the spider woman lives.” 

Momo squints against the dusk, leaning until her nose presses against the cool glass. The maple forest has broken. They’re now teetering on a long, skinny bridge over dark water that stretches out until it blends with the edges of dusk. 

“She has a battalion of little fire-breathing black widows,” Sana says, warm breath against Momo’s ear. Fingers scuttle over Momo’s knee. “Isn’t that spooky?” 

Fog dusts against the window pane.

“Do you know the story?”

Momo isn’t given a chance to say she does. 

“So one day, there’s a woodcutter at the head of the falls. He’s doing his work, but then his axe falls into the water. This woman swims to him, bringing back the axe. She’s beautiful, of course, and so he comes back every day to see her. And every day, he gets weaker. His muscles go slack, his head hurts, he has no appetite. The priest gets worried about the woodcutter so he follows him to the waterfall the next day. They’re on the banks when the priest sees a spider’s thread reaching for the woodcutter, and so he screams out scripture, and saves the woodcutter.” Sana twists the hairband around her wrist. “But the woodcutter doesn’t care that she’s this horrible demon, and so he goes back again. The last anyone sees of him, he’s being pulled on a thread into the waterfall.” 

Momo licks her teeth. It’s been a long time since she’s had a conversation, even longer since she’s had one with a person. “So you’re from around here.” 

“If you want to ask me a question, you should inflect.” 

“So you’re from around here?” 

“No.” Sana smiles brilliantly. The fluorescent lights shudder. “And you’re not either.” 

It’s not something Momo would have bothered lying about, but it still makes her squirm that Sana _knew_ it anyway. 

“It’s our accent,” Sana continues like a breeze. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because this is where we met.” Her eyes are wide and unfairly open and unfairly warm and unfairly her phone buzzes frantically between them. Sana reaches into her pocket, then smiles at the lit screen. “Wanna see?” She holds out her phone. “That’s Jihyo,” Sana’s finger indicates the tanner of the two women smiling at the camera. Behind them, whisplashed palm trees crook up at the sky. “And Mina. They’re in Hawaii on their honeymoon.”

“That’s nice,” Momo tries. 

“I was in love with both of them.” 

“Oh, that’s. Um. I’m—”

Sana crumples with laughter. 

City lights slash through the windows. 

There’s still that smear of eyeliner down her cheek. 

“Don’t feel bad,” Sana says when she recovers her breath. “Everyone tells me I’m a good liar.” 

Momo crosses her arms over her chest, sourly glancing at the still sleeping tourist. “Is that a lie?” 

Sana just smiles. She smiles like there’s always something true written in it. 

Momo doesn’t know the language. 

Another hunger cramp coils through her chest. She can smell the dream in the throat of the tourist, ripening with each even breath. Beside her, Sana yawns as her thumbs flutter over the phone’s keyboard. 

“If I sleep, you’ll be here when I wake up.” 

“Is that a question?”

Sana sits up, slipping her jacket off her shoulders and then tucking it into a tight square. “Did I inflect?” 

“Well, goodn—”

The makeshift pillow rests against Momo’s shoulder. 

“You’re bony,” Sana huffs, readjusting until she hums with satisfaction. 

Behind them, the tourist startles awake with a final, gasping snore. Momo curses in a whisper as Sana’s fingers curl around her elbow. 

Momo knows a different story about the spider woman. 

It starts just like Sana’s. The woodcutter is at the falls, his axe falls into the water. And the beautiful-of-course woman brings it back to the surface. The woman begs him not to tell anyone, and he promises. For a few days, he’s quiet and simple. But it’s hard to keep a yokai’s secret for them. The man can’t help it. He tells his friends. He goes to sleep. He doesn’t wake up. 

Momo isn’t sure what killed him. Maybe it was the spider woman, betrayal tesselating poison in her mouth. Maybe it was the other villagers; half-disgusted, half-envious. 

Momo knows all the stories about herself, too: 

The nightmare-eater that crouches on children’s beds and cures them of that nonsense pain. 

The last yokai— baku— cobbled together with all the leftover parts of creation. 

The friendliest parasite.

Sana stirs beside her. Momo knows by the heartbeat rabbit fast through her that she isn’t sleeping. 

The second world of Sana’s skull is heavy on Momo’s shoulder. She knows by spindling breaths against her neck that Sana isn’t asleep. 

Stories about yokai aren’t just warnings for children or tourists or girls on trains. They’re equally instructive for a yokai like Momo. The moral of every single one is ‘don’t give them everything.’ They’ll betray you. They’ll tie you up in a web and eat your heart out. 

Sana’s fingers tighten around Momo’s elbow.

* * * * *

It’s against every survival instinct in Momo’s body, but when the train begins to screech toward the station she wakes Sana with a squeeze to her knee. Sana yawns and smacks her lips, struggling back into her jacket. Momo helps her pick up the clementine peels that fell to the train car’s floor.

“Where are you going now,” Sana asks as she checks her appearance with her phone camera. She licks her thumb and wipes at the stain of that hours-old tear. 

“Um.” Momo has no idea what city they’re in. Not a big one, judging by the lack of light pollution. 

“You’re still hungry,” Sana prompts. 

“I’ll just wander around until I find something.” There are always sleeping drunks or strays in the alleys. 

“Ito doesn’t exactly have Osaka amenities.” Sana smears the black tear track with her shirtsleeve. “It’ll just be convenience stores. Are you a picky eater?” 

“Kinda.” 

“And a picky talker.” 

When the doors open, Sana scurries over to help the tourist gather his scattered brochures, then hoists her suitcases from the overhead bin. “Aren’t you coming?” Sana’s head is cocked to the side. 

So Momo is coming.

* * * * *

Sana doesn’t have an umbrella and Momo has nothing but the clothes on her back. On the train station platform, Sana unzips her suitcase and pulls out two t-shirts. They hold them over their heads as they slosh through puddles lining the sidewalks of the small town, Sana’s suitcases trailing behind them.

“The buses don’t run this late,” Sana huffs. Her mood has shifted since they’ve started walking. Momo isn’t sure if she should ask, but it seems like Sana is the type of person to talk about something if she wants to talk about it. And besides that, Momo doesn’t know how to ask, except to inflect, and right now the ruling thing is that she’s— 

“You should ask.” 

“Uh. What?” 

“You should ask why we haven’t stopped at any of the convenience stores.” Sana juts her thumb over her shoulder. “We’ve passed three. And there will be two more before we get to my grandma’s house.” 

Momo didn’t even notice. “I could have stopped,” she points out. 

“But you wouldn’t.” 

Again, Momo gets the sick, nervous feeling that Sana can see all of her; like she’s just a fossil laid out on the earth, each bone just a brushstroke away from being white and bare in desert sunlight. 

“Why wouldn’t I?” 

Sana sighs. Her face is hidden by the rain-soaked shirt. “I think I’m very tired, Momo.” Then, like a bolt gun’s sudden snap, she giggles. “I’m Sana who is very tired, and you’re Momo who is very hungry.” 

“We’re a match,” Momo dares. 

“Maybe.” 

They pass two more convenience stores. Momo’s socks are soaked through with rainwater. On a night like this, there won’t be dogs or drunks in the alleys. The riverbeds will be flooded. A jaguar can go ten days without a meal. Momo has already made it seven.

* * * * *

Sana’s grandmother’s house is more like a shack. It’s set in the folds of the sand dunes just before the beach runs out flat to the sea.

“Be careful around that tree,” Sana says as she hoists her suitcase up onto the driftwood porch, jutting out her chin toward a black willow growing in the unkempt garden. “It’s a vampire.”

Sana unlocks the door and walks into the shadows of the house. Momo knows it’s empty, maybe the same way Sana knew unspoken things about her. She glances at the reflection of herself in the dusty windowpane; soaking wet, hair long and stringy, hovering between the two overpacked suitcases. 

There’s a clatter from inside, then a few chirped curses, and a light flicks on. “You’re coming,” Sana calls. 

And Momo is. 

The floorboards creak under her weight. Abandoned spiderwebs tangle around bare yellow lightbulbs. 

“Take your shoes off,” Sana shouts from somewhere deeper in the house, and Momo does. She glances at the frayed leather couch, unsure if she should sit. 

She’s used to dark, shapeless bedrooms; open fields; cramped, anonymous alleys. The details here are overwhelming. Old newspapers are laid out over the coffee table, a radioactively yellow highlighter strung along thin alphabets. Vinyl records fill the bookcase. There are pictures too, stuck to the walls with pushpins. Most are simple polaroids of shells, the beach in the morning, the garden when it was greener. There are also pictures of Sana, always smiling. Momo steps carefully over the mess on the floor, tracing back through time. 

Sana with two girls. Jihyo and Mina, maybe. They’re all wrapped around each other in a three-part hug. 

Sana with a diploma and lipstick on, teetering in heels. 

Sana back further, and further, through sunburns and sandcastles, younger and younger. 

Momo doesn’t usually trouble herself with faces. She’s there for a few moments, and the head of a cow or a person or a dog is essentially the same. She just likes to remember the simple relief when the dream is gone and their sleeping is dark and mindless again. 

There’s something, though, in this picture halfway down the wall, where Sana is laying in a— 

A t-shirt is thrown across the room, landing on Momo’s head. A dry t-shirt. 

Sana is leaned against the hallway doorjamb in pink button-down pajamas. “Don’t mock me,” she starts, marching across the room to turn the TV on. “They’re all I have.” 

“I like pink,” Momo mumbles. She looks down at the shirt in her hands, trying to figure out what exactly she’s supposed to—

“The bathroom is the second room on the right. I left sweatpants in there, and some underwear but if that’s weird you can just eat them.” 

“I’m not that hungry.” 

“Aren’t you,” Sana calls to the shut door. 

Momo decides that the underwear thing is weird, but she doesn’t really have another option. She hangs her wet shirt and jeans next to Sana’s on the shower-curtain rod over the bathtub. She doesn’t look in the mirror. 

When she comes out, the TV is chattering out rapid advertisements. Sana is small under a heavy quilt, staring blankly at the screen. And then, just like before, something in her eyes snaps back to brightness and she beams at Momo. The yokai gets the feeling that she should look behind her, that someone Sana loves might be standing there. 

“I should be going,” Momo says.

Sana doesn’t shatter. She lifts the quilt. “I can’t tempt you with a clementine.” 

“Uh.” Momo chews her tongue. “I don’t— I shouldn’t, uh. Stay?” 

“You’re asking.” 

“Are you?” 

“Yes, Momo. I’m asking you to stay. Are you a good cuddler?” 

“Probably not,” she says, sinking onto the leather couch. Sana pitches the blanket over her legs. There are three inches between their shoulders. She’s put on perfume. Momo grips her own hand tightly beneath the quilt. “But you could. Um. Like on the train.” 

Sana looks at her closely, eyes darting between Momo’s, like she’s reading a sentence she already knows. “You must think I’m very lonely. I’m Sana who is very lonely.” 

“I didn’t.” 

“Do you think about me at all,” Sana whines ferociously, tucking her head against Momo’s shoulder. 

“I thought I was too bony. I’m Momo who is too bony.” 

“You are, but we’re making sacrifices.” 

The news is on but Momo isn’t listening. Every breath drawn through Sana is too loud, slow and then quick again, never quite sliding off into sleep. 

Finally, she yawns long and wide, and shifts away. 

“Would you rather have the bed?” 

“No, this is fine.” It’s not like Momo sleeps anyways. 

“There’s also my grandma’s room, but I’d rather not, uh.” Sana rubs her eyes. “Well, I—”

“I get it,” Momo says. Maybe she does. 

“Okay. You’ll be here when I wake up.” 

“No inflection.”

Sana doesn’t move an inch. 

“Yes, I’ll be here.” Momo fakes a yawn and stretches out on the couch as Sana slumps back into the dark hallway. 

A spider scrawls across the ceiling. 

Hunger claws at her chest. 

Behind a locked door, Sana’s dream is blooming in her throat.

* * * * *

In the morning, Momo shuts her eyes when she hears Sana’s alarm ding distantly. She tucks the quilt up around her chin, listening to the shower, then a maze of doors opening and closing, then Sana’s careful footsteps into the kitchen to fill a kettle and set it on the stove.

Momo decides she’ll pretend to wake up when the kettle whistles. That will seem natural. That won’t be—

There’s a poke to her cheek. She yelps and Sana is dawning. “Do you like tea?”

“I can drink it.” Momo buries her face in the pillow. 

“Are you still hungry? Or did you sneak out in the night?” 

If Momo had felt briefly feverish before, now she’s shivering. “Um. No. I wouldn’t—” 

“I think there’s expired cup ramen in the pantry,” Sana says, suddenly businesslike. “Or, if you feel like something a little more sociopathic, there are probably fresh turtle eggs out on the beach.” 

The kettle shrieks before Momo can decide if she should laugh. “You’re not going to cook for me?” 

“I’m not a good cook.” Sana pours out two mugs and drops a tea bag in each. “And I have to go.” 

“Go where?” 

“You’ve gotten very good at questions.” She sits down on the floor beside the coffee table. “I think you’re ready to start guessing.” 

“Ah.” Momo cradles the steaming mug in her hands. She glances at Sana’s outfit. It’s just the sort of thing someone would wear to a nice office. But Sana isn’t from here, and this isn’t her house, and— “Job interview.” 

Sana pinches Momo’s knee. “Nope.” 

“Graveyard.” 

Sana blows across the surface of her tea. “Close.” 

“Uh. Cemetery?” 

Sana smiles. “Do I seem that strict?” 

Momo takes a tentative slurp. “I don’t know you.”

“I’m going to the hospice.” 

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Somehow that’s worse than going to a graveyard. Something about the brave look in Sana’s eyes makes it worse. 

“Where are you going?” 

The tea burns Momo’s mouth, but she keeps drinking, trying to think of an answer. There are rarely dreams in the daytime. For the next twelve hours, she’s doomed to hunger. 

“I’ll guess,” Sana breezes on. “You’re going to sit here all day, waiting anxiously for me to return.” 

“I’m not,” Momo coughs. 

“Well, I’ll take you through my reasoning. You came on a train to a town where you don’t seem to know anyone. Otherwise you wouldn’t have stayed with me.” 

Momo isn’t sure that’s true. 

“And so today you don’t really have anywhere to go, do you? If you get bored you might wander onto the beach, or walk through town, but you’ll be here when I come back. I’m guessing.” There’s a challenge in Sana’s smirk, but Momo’s brain is blank except— she likes the cut of Sana’s mouth. That’s the only clear thought she can come up with, well beyond the time that the door has shut and she’s in a lonely place again.

* * * * *

Momo’s first act of rebellion is to take a shower. Sana hasn’t prophesied that in her little list.

It takes a few minutes for the water to heat up. She folds her clothes— Sana’s clothes— on the counter, and washes with what must be Sana’s shampoo and Sana’s soaps. 

Then, after she towels off her hair in front of the mirror, she inspects the canisters of hairspray, the perfume bottle, the nail polishes spilled out of a lipstick-smeared Ziploc bag. 

The hours of the day pass quick, the static of the TV like sand in a sieve. It's constant. It’s easy to tune out. It lets the mind wander. 

Sometimes Momo imagines the hospice. She’s been before— not to begin her grieving, but to feast. People in comas dream so endlessly, that last living part of their mind trying to find a final, perfect thought to lift them to Heaven. 

Or wherever. 

Maybe it’s as simple as being folded into the earth, being cut and quartered for the mouths of the worms, and the worms dreaming the dreams of the dead. 

Maybe they become something like Momo. 

Maybe they really are nothing at all anymore. 

Maybe Sana knows.

* * * * *

The blade of the paring knife slips through Momo’s skin.

“Momo!” Sana scolds joyously. “Stick it in your mouth!” But she’s already whipped around to pull a first aid kit from the cabinet. She snatches Momo’s wrist and smoothes a bandage over the cut, then cradles Momo’s hand in her own to wipe away the blood that had trickled down to her palm. 

Sana had come home twenty minutes ago with an apocalyptic amount of groceries, ordering Momo to cook and pitching her phone across the living room when Momo said she didn’t know how to make anything. 

They bickered until chicken curry was the only option.

“You know,” she starts. 

Momo doesn’t. But she wants to. 

“When I was on the bus, this woman sat down next to me and took my hand in her’s.” The tip of Sana’s thumb tickles across Momo’s palm. “She traced this line and— well, it’s different from yours. Mine just kind of fades off in the middle of my hand.” 

“What does that mean?”

On the cutting board, Sana's phone trills. 

“That I’ll only fall in love once.” 

She goes out to the porch to take a call from Mina or Jihyo.

Momo doesn’t ask which.

* * * * *

When Sana comes back in she yawns theatrically.

“Are you going to nap?” Momo tries not to drool. 

“Nope.” 

Sana turns on the TV and starts cackling at the commercials. 

With every stupid, long minute Momo thinks of another question to ask. 

_Who was on the phone? How is your grandma? How are you? Do you know what I am? Would you ever want to?_

She wants to think of something before Sana can ask her something terrifying like—

“Are you going out to eat?” 

Of course she had noticed that Momo’s portion of the curry was packed up in the fridge. 

“Ah. I probably should.” 

“Getting bored already?” Sana’s eyes are so impossibly kind. Like she’s already forgiven Momo for something that hasn’t happened yet. 

“Kinda.” Momo twists the quilt in her hands. “Is there anything you wanna talk about?”

“What would I want to talk about?” 

_That you were crying on the train. That sometimes you seem angry. That you brought a stranger into your family’s house. That you can only fall in love once. Whatever you told Mina or Jihyo and how they made you laugh.._

“Hmm?” There’s a challenge in the imperial arch of Sana’s brow. 

“Okay,” Momo sours. “Fine.” 

She doesn’t slam the door. She doesn’t need to. 

On the porch her tennis shoes are propped up to dry in the sunlight. She double knots, then sets out across the garden path. 

“Stupid,” she curses to herself. She doesn’t mean Sana. “Stupid.” 

She’s halfway to the road when she hears the door behind her, then Sana’s breathless shouts, footsteps dampened by sand. 

Momo isn’t going to turn. There was a weird night, and a weird morning, and a weird day, and Momo doesn’t stay. By design, she doesn’t stay. She spends five minutes in someone’s life, makes a night a little easier, and then someone else calls for her and she goes. It’s that simple, and if Sana can’t— 

There’s a hand on her elbow. She twists away, but then Sana’s grip is firm around her wrist. 

“Dont’—”

And lips. 

Lips pressed to the bandage on her hand, brief and burning and there for just a— 

“Okay,” Sana says. Her eyes are still closed, hands folded around Momo’s in a prayer. “You’re just supposed to— you know.”

Momo doesn’t.

“To make it better.” Sana turns on her heel abruptly, marching back to the house. “I’m sorry I forgot.” 

The waves, the wind, everything is setting its teeth against the frayed edges of the earth.

* * * * *

The sun isn’t even setting yet.

Momo walks fast, like maybe it’ll get the world to turn quicker into the waiting darkness. 

She dips through the square shadows of the town, peeking down the alleys. A stray dog is her best bet. 

She is not thinking about Sana. She is not thinking about how Sana is open and bare and simple and then, with one conversational misstep, not there at all. _Teasing._ As if Momo cares at all. 

She is not thinking about how it’s infuriating as much as it’s enchanting, like a crane machine at the arcade that keeps swallowing golden token after golden token. 

Momo finds a sleeping cat at one of the neighborhood shrines, curled up on the steps. Infant demons lick at the stains on the oil lamps. 

She stops at the fountain and ladles the water over her hands. 

She doesn’t look at the bandage. She doesn’t look at the heartline on her palm. 

She rinses her mouth and spits beside the fountain. 

She doesn’t have a coin for the offering box but she bows anyway. 

“I hope this is enough,” she whispers to whatever little god lives here. 

The shrine’s cat is dreaming of pearls. She rolls them around on her tongue to savor, then swallows. 

“Thank you for the meal,” Momo kisses against its white fur. “Can I sit with you for a while?”

The cat says nothing. 

Crows fill the pines like bullets.

* * * * *

The front door is unlocked, a lamp left on in the living room. The quilt is folded up on the couch next to the pillow.

* * * * *

In the morning, when Momo hears the shower turn on, she kicks off the blankets and starts the kettle.

All last night she watched cooking shows and jotted down notes in the margins of the old newspapers. It’s an American breakfast— scrambled eggs, strawberry jelly on toast, a pork sausage— and it’s ready when Sana stumbles out of the bathroom with a frayed towel wrapped around her. 

“I like my eggs poached,” she complains with a smile, sitting down at the kitchen table. Her hair drips on the linoleum floor. 

Momo fills the sink with warm water. It’s tainted orange, sick with the salt of the sea. 

“You know, it looks like we’re in love.” 

A laugh startles from Momo’s chest. “We aren’t doing anything.” 

“Yes we are.” Sana points at her accusingly with a butter knife. “You, washing dishes, looking out at the beach.” Sana’s right. The dusty window above the sink is all that’s between her and a greying sea. “You’re thinking about how it’s not as beautiful as it’s supposed to be. And I’m eating my third favorite kind of eggs, about to read the headlines in a months-old newspaper.” 

“Hmm.” Momo scrubs the frying pan in tight circles. “But no one is looking. And besides, wouldn’t love be your favorite kind of eggs?” 

An arrowhead of seagulls pass over the dunes. 

Sana brings the dishes to the sink, and she insists, and then Momo insists, and they end up trying to wash a single plate with four slippery hands. 

“Aren’t you going to get dressed,” Momo sighs after she’s wrestled the cutlery into a towel to dry. 

“Aren’t you going to shower?” 

“When you leave.” 

“How cruel,” Sana peals. “And here I was about to ask you to come with me to the hospice.” 

There’s a family setting up an umbrella out on the beach. 

“So ask.” 

“Momo.” Sana throws herself back on the couch. “Momo, who made me breakfast, will you shower quick and go to the hospice with me?”

* * * * *

The woman dying used to be a diver.

“I know I’m not supposed to remember her this way,” Sana is saying. Her eyes are closed in a reverence Momo actually believes in. “I’m supposed to remember her sealed in a tar-black wetsuit, too tan to get sunburn, holding abalones up in her fists.” 

Sana is folded up in a fold-out chair, dragged across the tile to tuck against the corner of the bed. Her hands are folded around one of her grandmother’s. Momo drifts at the corner of the room, unsure of where she’s supposed to be in this. Not too close, probably. Not by Sana’s side. That’s for someone else. 

This is nothing like the woman’s house. It’s clean and angular, stark and white. The frames on the walls are of stock photo orchids. The bonsai in front of the window has plastic leaves. 

“She could hold her breath for three minutes. I used to time her. She’d dive, and I’d sit in the boat and wait. And then I’d time her later, when we were just sitting on the couch together, but she could never do it as long. Isn’t that funny?” 

Momo doesn’t think so, and she doesn’t think Sana does either, but she offers a smile anyway. “Can’t she hear you?” 

Sana’s grandmother is in an induced coma, and she will be until she passes. On the bus, Sana had explained it all; brain cancer; the prognosis was six months; now it had been seven. 

“Do you mind, baba?” 

Momo would think it was cruel, talking to this woman whose only response can be the oxygen tank hissing breath after breath through her parted lips, but it’s Sana. It’s Sana whose eyes are desperate with affection, whose fingers smooth back the wisps of hair from her brow. 

“She doesn’t,” Sana says. “She always likes meeting my friends, too.” She clears her throat. “Baba, this is Momo.” 

“Ah. Hi.” 

“Would you like me to be honest, Momo?” 

“Yes,” she breathes. 

“Baba probably wouldn’t like you.” 

Momo expects a teasing smile, but Sana’s gaze is firm. 

“Jihyo was her favorite, because she’s so...forceful. And you’re more like Mina, who baba was always— what would she say? Iffy? She was iffy about Mina.”

“Why?”

Sana smiles serenely. “She’s very polite.” 

Above them, a horsefly purrs across the bare fluorescent line of light. 

“Sometimes I wonder if I have cancer yet,” Sana breezes on. “I promise I’m not this morbid. It’s just— well, doesn’t this make you wonder what’s inside you?” 

Momo knows. 

All she has is a stomach. 

“And isn’t it weird,” Sana continues, and Momo has learned she’s like this. She talks like she’s untangling a knot. “That there’s so much of you that will never be touched, all stitched up inside?” 

The cut on Momo’s hand sears under the bandage. 

Only Sana has touched her. 

These places— the knee she had tickled on the train, the shoulder that bumped against Sana’s in the rain— are sore and tender. 

But Sana didn’t hurt her. Sana wasn’t harsh— if anything, she was too gentle. 

Maybe the aching beneath Momo’s skin isn’t pain, but—

“Do you know the weirdest part of all this?” 

Momo doesn’t. 

“I’ve been grieving for six months. And now— when it happens, I really don’t know what I’ll feel.” Sana preses her cheek to her grandmother’s limp hand. “I really think I’ve used up all I have left.”

“Maybe that’s good,” Momo says. “Maybe that’s the best thing that can happen.”

“I guess.” Sana’s eyes open to a sadness Momo wishes she could swallow. “I think I’d just like it to be beautiful somehow.” 

The thin hose of the oxygen tank is kinked like a cobra over the old woman’s throat.

* * * * *

They settle into a pattern.

In the mornings, Momo makes breakfast while Sana showers. They ride the bus to the hospice. Then they split off like a river— Sana to go home for a nap, Momo to find the shrine cats that sleep in slotted sunlight. She comes back to cook dinner while Sana sits on the counter and reads the headlines aloud. 

Tonight, the fifth night, Sana has decided on riddles instead. 

“A horse jumps over a tower and the tower disappears,” Sana reads from her phone, enunciating like she’s on a stage. “Where could this happen?” 

“A dream,” Momo says automatically. The steam from the boiling pot pricks sweat down her back. 

“Wrong again! A chessboard.” 

“Or a dream,” Momo pouts. 

“Dreams are cheating.” Sana’s fingers dash across the screen. “A sphere has three, a circle has two, and a point has zero. What am I?” 

Momo isn’t even going to try. 

“A dimension!” 

“Sana,” Momo sings to herself. “Sana who has three, and two, and one.” 

“Zero,” she corrects. She smiles more when Momo is wrong. That’s why Momo doesn’t really try. “I always follow you around everywhere you go at night. I look very bright and I can make the sun dark. What am I?” 

_Sana._

Momo shrugs and lowers two white eggs into the hissing water. 

“The _moon_ ,” Sana despairs. She slaps the table in mock frustration, and for a second Momo thinks she might do something crazy, like throw a chair or puke or kiss her. 

It’s there, and Sana is on fire, and then she slumps back against her chair. 

In six silent minutes, the eggs are ready. Momo puts them in a bowl of ice.

* * * * *

The next afternoon, they’re at the hospice.

Momo sits on the vinyl loveseat, while Sana crouches on the floor beside a record player they brought from the house. 

“This is your favorite,” Sana coos, and Momo knows when her voice goes that little it’s for her grandmother. She lays the needle down. 

The men have just started singing when Sana’s phone rings and her face lights up with quick, quiet hellos. “I’ll be in the courtyard,” she stage-whispers, already halfway out the door. 

Mina or Jihyo. This time, Momo promises herself, she’ll ask. And then maybe all the other questions that claw in her mouth but never quite rip past. 

But maybe Sana doesn’t want someone who asks. Maybe she just wants someone to make her dinner, and listen to riddles, and be a brief confidante for this singular sad episode of her otherwise breezy, simple life. 

Momo resets the record when it runs out.

The old woman’s eyes are crusted closed. Her chest rises and falls in weak tides. 

“I’m not, uh.” Momo clears her throat. “I’m Momo. Sana said you wouldn’t like me, but. Can I sit next to you?” 

The air conditioner shudders on. 

“Okay.” Momo tentatively sits on Sana’s chair beside the bed. “I don’t really have much to talk about, but. Don’t you get tired of hearing the same songs? I think I would, even my favorites.” 

She touches the pointed edge of her cracked canine with her thumb.

“Sometimes,” her voice goes soft as sand, “I really wonder what’s left of you.” 

She glances back at the half open door. 

“I’d like to have it,” Momo whispers. “I’d like to take it all away.” 

There’s just the slow, heartbeat bump of the needle on an infinite black trench.

When Sana comes back in, her face is flushed from the sun and laughter. “Did you listen to all the songs?”

“Mm, we had a conversation.” 

Sana sits back down, and Momo wants to leave but she won’t ask. She sets the record back up, and halfway through Sana shoots her an accusatory glare. “This is the song.”

“‘The’ song?” 

“The song that makes me think of you.”

Toms roll thunder. 

The guitar balks. 

It sounds like a fever. 

“There’s a teardrop or a shaft of light for your heart,” Momo repeats skeptically once the song fades out. 

“I just thought it was nice,” Sana defends, plucking the needle up. 

“My voice will fade with the moon and the sunlight will remind me of you?” 

For the first time, there’s something like fear, like unfamiliarity in Sana’s eyes. “It’s a love song,” she says, uncharacteristically slow. 

“I didn’t know you liked sentimental things.” 

Some light snaps back into her eyes and Momo is thankful. “I only like sentimental things, Momoring.”

* * * * *

They take the bus home. Sana sits, her fingers fluttering over her phone, a smile stuck on her face. Momo grips the overhead bar tighter, swerving with the bus.

“Sit,” Sana orders without glancing up. 

“No.” Momo doesn’t know why she’s bitter but she does know. 

The phone ringing. 

Sana, who looked afraid. 

The dumb song. 

Sana, who seems to know more than she’s told. 

The hunger. 

Sana, consummately.

“Mhmm. Princess Momo, too good for a public bus seat.” 

Momo grits her teeth. “Is it Mina or Jihyo?” 

“Oh, look whose curious all of a sudden.” Sana finally looks up. 

Momo feels top-heavy, like she’s on the edge of a skyscraper, peering down, and all she has to do is lean a little harder and— 

“It’s Mina that I’m texting, but it was Jihyo on the phone.” 

“For two hours.” 

“We’re both talkative.” 

“So she’s like you,” Momo sours. 

Finally Sana laughs at something that isn’t on her screen. “She’s really not. But you know what they say, opposites attract.” 

Momo bites down fiercely on her tongue. 

“Like you and me,” Sana continues, tucking her phone back into her jacket. “You’re standing and I’m sitting. No one would think it would work out, but look.” 

Through the bus window, Momo sees the shrine, the arcade, convenience store after convenience store stamped white against the first breaths of sunset, all sliding through the faint reflection of her and Sana. 

The other woman heaves a sigh and recrosses her legs. “Why is eating at a restaurant on the moon boring?” 

Another riddle. 

“I don’t know.” Momo is determined not to look again. 

“Because Momoring isn’t there.” 

“Momoring,” she repeats to herself. It doesn’t sound the same in her own mouth. Not as gentle. 

“It’s what I call you in my head.” 

When Momo glances down, promising herself just a second, Sana is gazing up and Momo is important. She’s the most important person in the world.

* * * * *

The sunset slurs pink across the sky, contrails raised like scars.

Sana is in a heavy fisherman’s sweater, the sleeves hanging past her wrists. She’s carving kanji into a cucumber with a kitchen knife. 

“To keep the kappa bellies full,” she explains when she pitches the first in the sea. 

Momo pulls her own borrowed windbreaker tighter around her chest. “You really believe in that stuff?” 

“Mhmm.” Sana holds up the next cucumber, Momo’s name bright in its flesh. “Baba does too. She’s the one who taught me about them. The spider woman and the ghost whales and the bakus. It was all fun, as a kid, to think we lived in this magic world.” Sana forces a laugh. “But that’s redundant, isn’t it? The world just is magic. No one has to believe in yokai for them to be here.” 

She’s wrong, Momo thinks. It had been easier, centuries ago, when people would call out in the night for her, begging for her to take their dreams. Now she has to find unlocked windows or open fields if she wants to eat at all. 

“I actually had— well, I sort of made up my own thing, as a kid.” Sana pulls at her own fingers. “Do you— would you listen to it?” 

_I want you to tell me everything and I want to have an everything to tell you._

“Sure,” Momo breathes against the muscle of the wind. 

“Have you ever heard that if you dig a hole straight through the Earth you’ll end up in China? Probably not. First off, it isn’t true. Second, it’s an American thing. But I heard it on this TV show, and I thought it was real. It just seemed so beautiful it had to be. So I sort of decided that, on the other side of the world from Osaka, there was this girl waiting for me.” 

The waves are yellow with the yolk of the sun. 

“I’d lay on the floor in my bedroom with my ear against the carpet, and I pretended this parallel girl was doing the same. I thought one day I would be worthy and there would be a door there, and the two of us would walk through this tunnel and meet in the center of the Earth.” 

Sana cups her hand around the sand. It spills down like water. 

“But then I found out the antipode of Osaka was just open ocean off the Brazilian coast. There was no girl on the other side of the world waiting to love me.” 

Momo pushes her hands deeper into her pockets. There’s an arcade token there, and she circles the surface with her thumb. 

“It sort of— it sort of broke my heart, to be honest. I only told Baba, because I knew she— she believed in impossible things too. She brought me out to this beach early in the morning, before the tourists could come, and we found a conch shell.” Sana smiles helplessly. “She held it up to my ear and I heard the rush of the sea, tide over tide, and I thought finally. Here she is. I thought I was hearing my parallel girl’s bedroom.” 

The smile goes slack like a fishing line that’s lost its mystery creature. 

“And she told me I was just hearing the echo of my own blood.” 

Pink lightning fuzzes against the sky. 

“I really thought I was going to die. That whole night, laying in bed, I could only hear my own heartbeat against the pillow, and it didn’t seem like enough. It was too slow and too quiet and I was so afraid. I had always been alone, you know, but I always— I thought there was someone waiting. I thought I was lonely for a reason.”

Momo wants to reach out, to grip Sana’s wrist and pull and pull until they are inside each other, one silent mind, but there’s something so delicate and lilting about Sana’s voice. Like she’s a record and if just a fingertip glides across the vinyl it’ll disfigure the song. 

“I know I had a nightmare. I _know_ I did, but I can’t remember what it was about.” 

It’s like the sun has changed its mind, and is now rising from the west. Long shadows pull back around Momo and Sana’s bodies, the earth spins in reverse, the hurricanes spin counterclockwise, the buildings destroy themselves and rise again with flesh-colored stones. And Momo remembers a bedroom with plastic stars sticky-tacked to the ceiling in nonsense constellations, a bedroom with hot pink curtains and a deconstructed crib laid like firewood in the corner, orange-fuzzed light pollution against dusty blinds, a distant train howling and a girl howling on the bed. 

She remembers an unfamiliar ocean pouring from the kissing mouth of a conch., the shell cracking in her teeth and splintering her gums. She remembers swallowing her own blood with Sana’s dream. 

“I was sad when you didn’t know me,” Sana whispers. Momo doesn’t know if she’s looking at her, because she can’t dare to turn right now. “I thought— I really thought you would.” 

“It broke my tooth,” Momo whispers. 

“Mhmm. I remember the sound. It woke me up.” 

“How long ago was that?” 

Sana traces patterns in the sand with her pinkie. “Eight years. I’ve been— I sort of fooled myself into thinking you would be looking for me too.” 

The guilt is a wave. 

Water shouldn’t be so heavy. 

“You really forgot me, huh.” Sana’s voice is the same as when she’s talking to her grandmother, like when she’s talking to someone who cannot listen. This must be how Sana has lived, whispering to herself, kissing her own cut fingers, always wishing her heartbeat was someone else’s. “I’m sorry about your tooth. I’m sure you wished I would have dreamed of a Peking duck or yogurt or, like, multivitamins, I guess.” 

“I’m sorry,” Momo whispers. Anything else is too loud, too forceful. She wants Sana to know, the way she’s known everything, how simple she is inside. “I’m the one who should be sorry.” 

“Baba told me that people who grow up lonely get crooked. Like bonsai who only ever get one sliver of sun. You just get all bent up, trying to— trying to be loved.” 

It’s uncomfortable to be unanchored by Sana’s eyes. Momo is sure the next wave will take her back to the sea with it, and then she’ll have to search her own eight years for this same beach, this same person to sit next to and breathe with. 

“So I get it.” Sana pushes her hands beneath the cold sand. “I get that I’m— I’m asking for a lot.” 

The salt in the air is harsh against Momo’s throat. “For what?” 

“Unbreak my heart.” Sana laughs at herself. “Throw open the curtains. Make me eggs. I don’t know. I think I’m asking for everything, Momo.” 

Ghost crabs hurry across the sand, lit by the fingernail moon. 

“Okay.” 

Finally, Sana looks up. Her eyebrows are quirked, a single tear trailing down to her jaw. “Don’t make me love you more.” 

On the walk back home, their hands swing between them, linked loose by the fingers.

* * * * *

“Red-crowned cranes roost in the snow over Hokkaido River,” Sana reads aloud, the tip of her finger tracing beneath the headline.

They’re in the hospice room, midday sun angled harsh against the window. Momo sits on the floor, back leaned against Sana’s leg. She traces the other woman’s bare ankle bone with the tip of her finger. 

“Oh, here’s a more current one: robotic wolves keep foraging wild boar at bay on Chiba farms.” 

“Poetry,” Momo sighs. 

“What would a robotic wolf dream of?” 

“No more riddles.” 

“The correct answer is Sana,” she chirps. “How about this: cattle all over disappearing, farmers say spaceships to blame.” 

“Cows dream of their best friends.” Momo leans back. Sana’s knee is bony. “Wait, wait, I’ve got one. What do you call a sleeping cow?” 

Sana’s hand passes through her hair. “Tell me.”

“Dinner.” 

And they laugh up at the fluorescents until the hospice shakes with laughter, and everyone springs from their beds and the cancers surrender and there is no more dying. 

Is that what it feels like? 

And why can’t what it feels like be all that— 

There’s a weak cough from the hospice bed. 

A Rube Goldberg chain of attention passes from Sana’s body to Momo’s. The scent of the dream is like salt by the sea. 

“Can I—”

“Yes.” 

A jaguar isn’t self-conscious when it descends the staircases of the jungle, and Momo is a jaguar when she pulls the oxygen mask away from the old woman’s face and slips two fingers in her mouth so the dream can take its first breath. 

Pinkish tentacles scrawl past the diver’s yellow teeth, the bulbed body still fissioning in the back of her throat. The animal empties itself from one mouth into another. 

Momo chews. 

She swallows. 

A severed tentacle twitches on the tile floor. 

“Sorry,” Momo mutters, wiping the blue blood from her mouth with the skin of her wrist. 

Sana leans down, taking the last part of the dream in her hands. The tentacle winds around her fingers. “One more bite?” 

“No.” Momo wants it. She just doesn’t want what it means. “I shouldn’t take everything.” 

_Not yet._

* * * * *

“This is getting long,” Sana says one night, reaching up to thumb at the frayed edges of Momo’s ink black hair.

They wash it in the sink, a chair tipped back against the counter, Momo gripping Sana’s elbows until the fingers massaging shampoo through the knots soothe her eyes closed and her body limp.

Once it’s done and brushed out flat, Sana takes the scissors from the drawer. 

Momo stares past her. “What’s Mina’s hair like?” 

“Um. Shortish, just above her shoulders. Jihyo’s too.” 

Momo nods gravely. “Okay.” 

Sana laughs. “Is that how you want it?” 

“Uh.” Momo looks down at her folded hands, flexing a fist and then cradling it. “Well. I saw this girl on a billboard.” It takes a little poking and prodding, but Momo finally rolls her eyes and pulls at the front strands. “It was short here, and then longer in the back.” 

“A hime cut,” Sana confirms. 

Momo heaves a long-suffering sigh. “I guess.” 

“I want to say something. Can I say something?” Sana doesn’t wait long enough for the ‘yes’ to bloom, as it always would. “I adore you.”

She dips a kiss to Momo’s shoulder. 

“We look like we’re in love,” she says so soft she’s afraid Sana might not hear her. “You brandishing scissors, me with uneven hair.”

“Barely,” Sana whines. “Barely uneven.”

* * * * *

Their pattern hasn’t changed much.

Sometimes Momo skips going to the hospice, just in case Sana’s grandmother dreams again. She’s never had to stop herself before, and Sana— Sana doesn’t seem to want her to. 

Every day there is a new intimacy, though. Like:

Sana rests her head on Momo’s shoulder on the rickety bus home, and every bump of their foreheads is a stupid little miracle. 

Sana’s hand, when it falls to Momo’s thigh as they watch TV, doesn’t always drift back down to her knee. 

Their hugs last longer. Their hips press together. 

They brush their teeth side by side. 

Momo sits on the bathroom counter while Sana showers so they can keep talking. Sana will write messages in the steam on the clear door, and then complain when Momo can’t read backwards. 

Sometimes she wants more. Sometimes she wants a pickaxe, to have everything, all at once. 

Sometimes all Sana wants to do is sit across the room from Momo so she can stare at all of her. And Momo stares back. And sometimes it’s nice to feel hungry like that. 

But the bedroom door remains locked. 

The couch remains comfortable enough.

* * * * *

At the arcade, they dance mathematically on Dance Dance Revolution machines to a song about a girl in love with her wisdom teeth.

They dance until it’s good enough for the scoreboard. Momo types out Sana’s name twice with the arrows. 

Arms full of Hello Kitty knock-offs from the crane machine, they walk back home because the buses aren’t running. 

“Do you know much about moons,” Sana asks, trudging through a puddle. 

“Tell me anyway.” 

“Okay. Jupiter has the most. They’re named after swans and bulls and other assorted lovers.” She yawns wide. “Every year they find more for him. But I like the loyal planets. Mars has two, and we have one, obviously, and so does Pluto. And yes, yes, I know,” Sana whines, “Pluto! But it’s the best love story in the sky.” 

Momo bumps their shoulders together. “Tell me.”

“Pluto is the most faithful. It’s completely equal to its moon, it’s more like they’re orbiting each other. Their faces never turn away from each other.” 

Sometimes Momo feels weightless. Like she can dare to do or say anything and Sana will forgive her so fast it hardly even happened. “Why haven’t we kissed?” 

Sana stops in the gutter with a stomp. “Do you want to?” 

“No,” Momo lies, and she knows Sana knows she’s lying, and that’s the perfect way to tell the truth. 

“Good.” Sana grins. “Kissing ruins everything.” 

“Really?”

“Mhmm.” Sana starts her march again. “We’ll get so silly if we start kissing.” 

And it’s all Momo thinks about as she cooks dinner, as they watch TV until Sana’s eyes get heavy, as she hears the lock click and the living room turn lonely again. 

Sana’s mouth. 

Which had been on her mouth, once. Eight years ago. 

It’s sick that she can’t remember, that her brain can’t hinge onto something long enough for her to wish to dream of it. 

“If I could dream,” she says to the spider on the ceiling, “I’d dream about that, you know?” 

Spiders don’t dream either. 

The room is empty of everything until the sun rises again.

* * * * *

Sana runs out of newspapers and riddles and starts reading the Bible to her grandmother. It’s the only book in the hospice room, a little pocket copy left behind by one of the nurses.

“Momoring,” she calls, and Momo obediently untucks the headphones from her ears. “There’s a story in here about an emperor having a nightmare about cows. It’s all one big circle!” 

“Mhmm.” Momo stretches her legs out across the tile. “What else?” 

“Do you really care?” 

“Mhmm.” 

“Convince me you care.” 

Momo sighs. “I like the real things better.” 

“Who’s to say this isn’t real? _You’re_ real, so this can be too.” 

“Okay. I care very much.” 

“The dreams are important in here,” Sana says, flipping back through the pages. “They’re always prophecies and warnings.” 

“Mhmm.” 

The hospice bed is as a white as a dinner plate.

* * * * *

Momo sweats over the stove, her hair gathered up in a ponytail. Oil shines in the cast iron skillet. She holds a cold beer to her carotid as the glow pulls from her cheeks.

“Sana,” she calls. “Would you rather—” 

By this syllable count she’d usually be interrupted. It’s instinct to stop mid-sentence. 

But Sana doesn’t call back. All she can hear is the TV chiding from the other room. 

Momo peeks around the door jamb, and Sana is there, laid out on the couch. Eyes closed. Mouth parted. 

Dreaming. 

Momo bites her lip harshly. She’ll watch, she decides. She’ll look, for once, without Sana looking back. And then she’ll—

Sana’s spine lurches as she chokes on the dream. 

It’s animal instinct that has Momo crouched beside her, flattening Sana’s tongue with two fingers. 

There’s a sugar spun nest at the back of her throat, and she’s wild and mute until Momo pulls back. A thin string spools from Sana’s lips to Momo’s open palm, where a violin spider scurries over her knuckles. 

And then that line is cut by Sana’s smile. 

No one ever watches Momo feed. 

Usually she’s left to feel like a thief, a scavenger— but Sana’s eyes are calm even as her hands tremble to cup Momo’s jaw. 

Momo puts the spider on her tongue and opens her wide to show how the dream counts her teeth. 

It’s a twin impulse that latches Sana’s hand to Momo’s throat, and an impulse that draws her up like a sail, and an impulse that joins their lips. 

When they kiss, she expects hemotoxins. She expects fire and poison and pain in her mouth, or worse— for Sana to pull away, to spit her out but not the dream. 

But no.

Her hand falls to Sana’s open collar. 

Sana breathes a hiss through the spider’s legs. With the tip of her tongue, she delicately corrals the spider into her cheek. 

There are needlepricks against Momo’s gums, then Sana’s nose tracing the line of her jaw, whispering incoherently. 

Momo’s tongue is dumb with numbness, and then Sana is back, hitched to her again. 

Momo cradles her jaw with her palm, Sana’s mouth with her mouth. Everything they have fits in the space that is gently warmer than their skin. 

The dream is swallowed by someone. 

The heat is bearable for one more second. 

And then another.

And another. 

And another. 

After, when they finally fall apart, their backs on the floor, their hands intertwined, Momo laughs. 

“You’ve ruined everything.” Sana seizes her hand to kiss the knuckles. “Now I want to kiss all of you.” 

“I want to say something,” Momo pants. “That song. The one you play for your grandma.” 

Sana laughs melodically. “That’s what you want to say? ‘That song’?” 

“It’s a love song,” Momo whines. 

“Okay. Sing it.” 

“No.” 

“So I’ll never know,” Sana sighs morosely. “I’ll never know what Momoring was thinking after I kissed her.” 

“It’s a love song!” 

“Say it!” Sana pounces, jabbing mercilessly at Momo’s stomach. “Say it or it’ll kill me!” 

“You’ve bullied me into it.” 

“Define ‘it’,” Sana purrs. 

“Guess.” Momo crosses her arms over her chest to guard from the next attack. 

“You love me so much it makes you stupid.” 

She smirks so beautifully. 

“I love you so much it makes me stupid.”

* * * * *

There are two worlds and tonight Momo is in the bay where the sea breathes into the rocks and the ghost of a whale is rising into the tempered dark.

Its song is the same as the city’s. Groans of heavy machinery. The clicks on a steel train track. 

Momo sits in the sand, the wind like a rope pulling through her. 

The seashells shine like knives. 

It’s not always easy to find the root of a dream. Momo has tried biting through driftwood and turtle eggs. She has waded into the shallows and pulled the silverfish up, but the dream never breaks like a yolk into the other world, the world where Sana is waiting by her grandmother’s bed. 

The sun doesn’t rise here. 

If she tries to count time in tallies on the sand, it is washed away with the tide. 

A cyclone spins counter-clockwise through the blind eyes of the whale. 

The starfish are hands on Momo’s salt-stained shirt. 

The moon is an owl’s eye, blinking slow and hungry. 

Usually a dream surrenders, at some point. It grows in the throat, it chokes the person awake. 

But there are also dreams like this:

Oil spilled from the old woman’s mouth, and Momo sank inside to find this wasted beach. The constellations are just lines on the black palm of the sky. 

Momo knows stories about baku that get lost in dreams like this. 

She didn’t tell Sana. 

There’s a lot, now, that Momo thinks of. Everything she didn’t say out loud. 

The dream adds integers to itself. 

Trees grow and then crack open like oysters. Momo swallows the pearls that loll out. 

Nothing changes. 

Houses multiply like mold against the dunes. Momo goes into every bedroom. Sana is never there. 

A diver washes up on the shore during low tide in lilac wreckage. She’s tangled in a nylon net with saxophone fish. 

It’s not Sana. 

“Dream of her.” Momo pulls a scar across the sand and the diver spills against the shore. 

The cyclone spins counter-clockwise.

Lightning chandeliers the black-pitched sky. 

Searchlights halo the storm. 

Momo shivers in the rain, then shivers under the tin roof of one of the fungal houses. 

From another room, someone is singing. 

Momo goes to another room. 

The song isn’t there. 

When the rain stops, she goes back out to the beach. 

“Sing,” Momo tells the ghost whale. 

A teardrop falls from the moon.

It’s a shaft of light on the blameless ocean. 

“You really could hear her,” Momo sighs, triumphant. “Do you think she was right? That you wouldn’t like me?”

Red-crowned cranes roost in the snow over Hokkaido River. 

The shells blossom into shining cicadas and sing the next song on the record. 

“There’s not much left.” Momo says. To herself. To the whale that isn’t listening. 

Blood runs fingers down the thigh of the beach as robotic wolves fling themselves into the surf like lemmings, their circuits shivering out like burst stars. They rear back, steel fangs and wire muscles. They rush toward Momo. 

The earth opens like a door. 

Momo shuts it behind her. 

“I thought of a name for you.” Sana says when the lamp is switched on. She’s tucked under an afghan and so gracelessly pretty— hair tangled, cheeks flushed. 

Momo looks down at her shoes, then crouches to untie them. 

“Momoring,” Sana pouts, patting the space beside her as an instant olive branch. 

“You’re not real.” Momo collapses on the mattress. Instantly, like a vine, Sana is around her. 

“If you stay long enough I will be,” Dream Sana sings. “All the real people have gone away, Momoring.” 

Momo sighs, tucking her head to the crook of the ghost’s neck before she slits it and feeds like a lioness over a carcass. 

When Momo leaves the blood-stained bedroom, she is in a rainforest. The humidity bears down. Conch shells peel from the branches of the trees. A jaguar screams somewhere. When Momo finds the river that runs through the dream, Sana’s grandmother is making love to an octopus. 

This is what that last, ecstatic burst of life is in a dying person’s mind. It’s too big and broad to fit in a mouth. 

Momo remembers, distantly, the hospice. The yellow butter cut of the moonlight. The dream rising like fog, and her stupidly breathing, and now her mouth is wet with blue blood but the dream is still living. 

When the ghost whale swallows the rainforest, Momo is on the beach again. 

“How close can you get to something without touching it,” everything asks. 

Oxygen tank tubes constrict like vipers around the body of the whale. 

Momo doesn’t want to watch this part. She’s heard stories about this, too. Dreams collapsing, burning from the inside. 

She goes back to the dunes, into a crumpled house and lays on the floorboards, scratching tallies against the wood with her dulled fingernail. 

It’s weeks or barely a second when Sana sings into the darkness. “What am I, what am I, what am I.”

A horse jumps over a tower and the tower disappears. 

“See?”

Sana says see so there is one. 

Momo returns to the ocean. The waves bend away from her like rye. Ghost crabs spin out from the frayed lace of the seafoam. Momo follows one, her arm thrust down into the hard-packed sand, serrating all the way up to her bicep. 

She pulls the root of the beach out and up. It is round and perfect. 

“Momo,” Sana whispers on the wind. 

She bites into the dream and bites herself where she bit the dream and feels her breath fill four lungs. 

The water is as dark as oil.

The moon’s eye cataracts behind the clouds. 

The horizon tightens into a bedroom and a girl is choking on the bed. The coughs are sick and loud, echoing off the walls. 

She’s young, and now Momo is young too. 

And like she had, like she would, Momo opens the girl’s mouth and pulls out a conch as small as her fist. The shell cracks in her teeth and the dream heaves into death like a whale beached on the shore.

There are two worlds, and Sana is in this one. 

Momo pants on a tile floor. 

Two out of three things are alive in the hospice room.

* * * * *

They spread the diver’s ashes in the sea.

Sana cries, and then stops. “I think it’s over,” she says, her hand tracing circles under Momo’s belly button. “I think I’m sad but it’s over. And now everything else can happen.” 

Mina and Jihyo call, and when Sana is out on the porch talking, Momo takes her own time to weep in the bathroom. She stares at the mirror, where Sana’s grandmother must have looked at herself every day, watched herself go weak with her sickness. “I never thanked you,” she says, and hopes, in another world, her voice is clear. “I hope you like me now.” 

They make dinner together, using up the last of the groceries left in the fridge. There’s silence as Sana eats, but her legs are tucked over Momo’s and the eggs are scrambled and it still looks like love. 

“She dreamed about you,” Momo says quietly. She doesn’t want to break anything. “Or— actually, I think I was dreaming sometimes.” 

“Baby’s first dream,” Sana coos. “I’m glad you were with her. When it happened.”

On the train, they share headphones. When they go back over the Kona River, Sana’s hand intertwines with Momo’s. Distantly, the spider woman and her woodcutter are singing.

**Author's Note:**

> [the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-fO14G4Rg0)
> 
> all the headlines were taken from backlogs of the kyoto times 
> 
> thanks for reading uwu


End file.
